Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology

Entrance sign in Hyderabad

The main focus of the institute is on conducting applied research and experimental development in the area of banking technology. The research at the institute is directed primarily towards a specific practical objective that will serve the banking and financial sector.

Accordingly, the research and development activities of the institute aim at improving banking technology in India. While addressing the immediate concerns of the banking sector, the research at the institute also focuses on anticipating the future needs and requirements of the banking sector and developing technologies to address them.

• Financial Networks and Applications
• Electronic Payments and Settlement Systems
• Security Technologies for the Financial Sector
• Financial Information Systems and Analytics

Courtyard at the IDRBT villa in Hyderabad

The institute has set up state-of-the-art research centres for aiding and enabling applied research. Presently, the institute has the following six research centres for focused research and development:[2]

• Centre of Excellence in Analytics[3]
• Centre for Mobile Banking[4]
• Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security[5]
• Centre for Affordable Technologies[6]
• Centre for Cloud Computing[7]
• Centre for Payment Systems[8]

The institute organises a good international conference, in an area of relevance to the institute, every year to promote exchange of the latest knowledge, experiences, research findings and technical know-how so as to attain and sustain international standards of excellence in banking technology. The main idea is to bring to the country the latest research findings in various facets of Information Technology so that the relevant ideas can be explored further and considered for application in the Indian banking and financial sector.[9]

During the last three years, the institute organized the following three conferences:

• Eighteenth International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking –ICDCN 2017 (January 4 – 07, 2017)[10]
• Fifth International Conference on Fuzzy and Neural Computing 2015 (December 17 –19, 2015)[11]
• Tenth International Conference on Information Systems Security – ICISS 2014 (December 18 – 20, 2014)[12]

IDRBT offers a range of academic programmes, designed specifically to meet both the existing and emerging human resources of the Indian banking and financial sector. These include:[13]

• IDRBT Postdoctoral Fellowship (IPDF)
• IDRBT Ph. D. Programme
• Postgraduate Diploma in Banking Technology (PGDBT)
• M. Tech. Programme with University of Hyderabad
• IDRBT Project Trainee Scheme (IPTS)

Training programmes form an inherent part of IDRBT's initiatives in aiding technology absorption in the Indian banking and financial sector and keeping it abreast with the developments taking place in technology.[14] The institute's programmes are structured in a way to prepare the top and middle-level managements of Banks and other Financial Institutions for the future in technology banking.

These executive development and education programmes mainly focus on identifying the gaps in the skill requirements and then provide training in those areas. The IDRBT provides holistic executive education through these programmes that cover the entire spectrum of technology which is applied in banking and financial sector. The institute offers over 100 programmes that train over 2500 bankers every year.[15]

• Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) Forum [16]
• Indian Banks’ CIO Forum (IBCF)[17]
• Chief Analytics Officers (CAO)Forum [18]

• IDRBT Banking Technology Excellence Awards
• IDRBT Banking Application Contest
• IDRBT Annual Doctoral Colloquium

With the objective of instilling healthy competition and widening the reach of technology adoption and absorption in a faster way among all the banks, the institute constituted the IDRBT Banking Technology Excellence Awards [19] in 2001. The awards are a recognition bestowed on the banks which have implemented and improved the use of technology at all the fronts of banking activities for enhancing customer service as well as ease of doing banking.

The awards are presented keeping in view a particular aspect of technology implementation which changes year-by-year. There are various categories which focus on cyber security, financial inclusion, IT infrastructure, IT risk management, etc. These technology awards honour the best banks of the Indian banking and financial sector. The awards are presented by the governor of the Reserve Bank of India every year.[20]

To bank on the popularity of apps development, and bring in new and useful app innovations in the Indian banking and financial sector, the institute launched the IDRBT Banking Application Contest (IBAC) in 2016.[21] The IDRBT Banking Application Contest (IBAC) aims to serve two key purposes – Indian banking and financial community benefits from the innovative ideas from the best tech talent in the country, and the Gen Next gets an opportunity to showcase their tech talent through this platform.[22]

IDRBT is the certifying authority (CA) for the Indian banking and financial sector, licensed by the Controller of Certifying Authorities, Government of India, under IT Act 2000.[23] The CA issues digital certificates aimed to facilitate speedy and cost-effective digital transactions. These certificates are used by the RBI, banks and other financial institutions to exchange electronic messages between banks ensuring authenticity, integrity, non-repudiation and confidentiality. The CA services are aimed at facilitating. So far, more than 2,00,000 digital certificates have been issued by the CA.

With a view to provide focused attention and enable development of techno-banking in the country, the institute has promoted a new Section 8 company named The Indian Financial Technology and Allied Services (IFTAS). Headquartered in Mumbai, the mandate of the IFTAS is to provide IT-related services to the RBI, banks and other financial institutions.[24]

Services like Indian Financial Network (INFINET),[25] Structured Financial Messaging System (SFMS)[26] and the Indian Banking Community Cloud (IBCC)[27] have been handed over to IFTAS with effect from April 1, 2016.[28]